25/10/12 - Void

Today's post is being postponed till tomorrow. I'm collecting my thoughts from the past 2 weeks as it's got a little out of hand. I'll be relating my research so far (where possible) to the aim and objectives and then i'll be able to see which parts i need to look at a little more to balance things out. Hopefully by doing this is will help me with writing my lit review.

I'll be including the notes from today's tutorial in tomorrows post as well.

24/10/12 - Tech limits, dishonored, Spec Ops, Life Drawing

http://petebottomley.wordpress.com/do-technical-limitations-hinder-creativity-part-4/

This article is kinda interesting and goes into some of the technical limitations around at the moment. It talks about how the introduction of the PlayStation eye and kinect has made it possible for smaller companies to create mo-cap. It also talks about creative decisions that the Enslaved team took when it came to merging the divide between cut scene and game play by adding in an extra camera which would be cut to at moments the developers thought were appropriate. Also because of the availability of mo-cap to them the work flow changed meaning they could add in extra little things they thought would add to the immersion as the process went on.

There are more parts to this article which are all really interesting to read but this section had more about animation processes


I found a forum where someone was asking about facial animation in games, limitations and work flow for their own thesis. It seems that the people responding in this forum have experience although how much is unknown so these responses could not be complete ones. Here's one of the responses

"Limitations are a key thing with games, in general. In fact it might be easier to ask what limitations they don't have.

As far as I know, most game engines are limited to bones, although some can also use blendshapes. Some engines are limited further by the number of joints they can use per character, the number of joints that can influence each vertex, and so on. More bones and weights requires more memory and processing. Many games will save resources by have separate models for game play and cinematics.

As far as animating the bones, sometimes you'll have controls similar to what's used elsewhere. Other times, you may have to animate the joints manually. One game I worked on even treated facial animation like music, or typing - specific expressions would be assigned to keys on the keyboard, and you would try to hit those keys at just the right moment while playing everything back, while a script recorded the keystrokes and translated it to bones."

The last part of this was particularly interesting. And this approach would explain a lot of the unnatural facial expressions in games currently.

"With games, you're a slave to the frame rate. Everything has to be optimised so that the game can run at a consistent rate, even in scenes with dozens or even hundreds of characters. The second the action starts to slow down, the developers will look for corners to cut, that don't affect the game play. Usually model detail, texture resolution, and extra bones are the first things to be sacrificed."

Another reason why Animation is often simplified.


Is low poly really a reason for limited facial animation? I don't think so.  Ken Perlin's rig clearly demonstrates a large variety of facial expressions with very limited polys

Anticipation in game animation
I wanted to look into game animation while thinking about the principles of animation, one i was particularly interested in was anticipation as i felt it was one principle that generally is cut short. This sentence backs that theory up

" In games, an animator will be asked to strike a fine balance between instantaneous character response and believable movement. " (Mark Garabedian from animation mentor)

And added to by Sam Yip who works at Disney Interactive

 "The anticipations in video game animations could be just a few frames,"


 "if the frame rate is low and those few frames are skipped, then the player will not see the anticipation at all, which lessens the impact and believability of the animation."

DishonoredSide Note: Noticed an issue with dishonored (probably more about AI but i thought it was funny) A guard was stamping rats and then another came and joined him. A third appeared and decided it would be a good idea to shoot the rats killing both the rats and the two guards in the process. He then wandered off like nothing had happened. No animations for accidental friendly fire? Or interactions between NPCs? GTA4 had animations for when they bumped into each other but is that enough? I guess it's not that often that it would happen but would it make the game feel more alive if NPC's did interact more with one another. Like when they're having conversations with one another would it help if they didn't just stand next to each other and maybe gestured when they speak?

Test: Animate a gesture that people use when speaking, test if the gesture would be usable for multiple lines of dialogue. Can a few different gestures be enough to make it look convincing.

Evidence: Look at games where NPCs interact to see what (if any) gestures are already used, evaluate how effective they are.

Spec Ops: The line
Other Side note: James has been playing Spec Ops: the line for me today. It does seem to be more in line with the sort of Call of Duty and Battlefield sort of game play but as the review from Yahtzee and other sources suggested it has a lot more focus on how the story affects the characters psyche. He animations and actions get more extreme as the weight of his past choices play on his conscience. As James has played we have noticed that the way he attacks hand to hand has changed to be a little more extreme than when the character was calm and collected at the beginning of the game. An example is a new animation that been cropping up is as a take down move, beat an enemy to the floor and shove the nozzle of your gun into their mouth. A little excessive. His walk and run cycles have been affected by the injuries he's sustained as well.

If you want a game to make you feel completely horrible then this one is for you. I'm just watching James play and i feel guilty about some of the options.

Life Drawing
 The past 2 weeks I've gone to the extra life drawing class on a Tuesday  I went all through last year as well for a few reasons.

• Drawing from life is far better than drawing from photos
• It's helping me get better with proportions and weight distribution
• It's relaxing and a nice little constant for the week 

I forgot to upload them last week and i didn't manage to upload them yesterday so you get both weeks in one this week.

Week 1.
A collection of 2-5 minute sketches, one moving sketch and two 20 minute sketches.

Week 2.
We hadn't got a model so we drew each other (I'm so sorry.)

Reference:
Sam Yip and Mark Garabedian http://www.animationarena.com/video-game-animation.html
Forum comments http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=884223
Ken Perlin Facial Demo http://mrl.nyu.edu/~perlin/facedemo/

23/10/12 - Tech Limits

Technical limitations

http://web.ebscohost.com.libproxy.abertay.ac.uk/ehost/detail?sid=d538878e-5339-4476-b250-db0e517d4793%40sessionmgr14&vid=1&hid=16&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=buh&AN=24682503

Nice Journal with suggestions for how animation could be done in the future to add more realism by giving more control to the animators when it comes to blending methods, it would eliminate the need for an animation programmer who may not have the eye for what works best


Everything else

I have a lot more tabs open with things to look at but other than Life drawing and some animation practise I've been a bit lazy with my research. I found a collage of facial expressions, some including hands, in an article so I'm mimicking them. I've done three today but I'm not used to the controls on the eleven rig so it's been a little tricky, i do like the rig on the hands though. I think I'll upload the life drawing I've been doing as well because that counts as personal development and it's helping me understand weight a little better.

22/10/12 - Dishonored and Proposal/Lit Review

Dishonored

I've played a little way into dishonored now, at the beginning i think i was getting too focused on particular animations for NPC's and whereas the notes I've made have been valid points that would need to be improved to add more of a sense of realism they don't seem to have been helpful towards my theory form the previous post. In a way my analysis went backwards. Fortunately i noticed this fairly early on and decided it would be best to play properly and let myself become immersed in the game and think about the personalities with them fresh in my mind, then if i realized anything specific i could go back and record it.

My opinions on the main character (Corvo) so far have been mainly influenced by the introduction to the game and the safe parts in between each of my "missions" as during the missions he wears a mask which effectively makes him completely anonymous meaning the enemies and more important characters won't react to him as they would react if they knew his identity (however as the story goes on i would expect them to start reacting to his new persona in the mask as it gains more notoriety). All of my opinions are based on how NPC's react towards me and what options are available to me in the world.

Corvo, formally the Lord Protector and seemingly good friend to the Empress and her daughter. Good at his job, well known and respected throughout the kingdom until he is framed for the Empress' murder and the kidnap of her daughter. Specially chosen (for an as yet unknown reason) by the outsider (some sort of illusive magical dude, and yes that's the technical term) Not afraid to get his hands dirty and assassinate people presumably either because he was trained that way or because he will do anything to save the Empress' daughter? The later i'm not so sure about as as a character Corvo seems to follow the blank slate sort of game protagonist like Gordon Freeman in the Half Life series, you have few options to say anything to characters and when you do the answers are brief and to the point giving away very little or nothing at all about Corvo himself.

Based on my opinions i'll choose a few NPCs and write about what i can tell of their personalities, their relation to the main character and their opinion of the main character and then suggest through short animations how i think they would react to a specific action. Then i'll try it within the game and compare the results.

Proposal and Lit Review

I will hold my hands up now and say i have absolutely nothing drafted for my proposal and lit review at this point in time. I'm finding it difficult to collect the right information together and every time i try i find a large gap in my research so i end up going and looking into that for example the latest is that i haven't dedicated any time (yet) to looking into technological restrictions on animation for games which i think is necessary to know when i make suggestions.

I want more time to research.

Here's my rough aim and objectives, i ran them quickly by Robin and he seemed to think they were fine.

Aim
To Identify and suggest possible solutions for making a more complete library of animations for NPCs within story driven games.

Objective
Research what an NPCs place within a story driven game is.

Research what technical limitations exist in game animation.

Develop my understanding of human interactions

Analyse existing games and identify gaps in NPC's animation libraries

20/10/12 - Posing and Dishonoured

Today i spent some time on the second recommendation from the 11 second club. I went out and bought a magazine and then tried to mimic some of the poses as accurately as i could with a 3D character rig, because i wanted a slightly more lifelike shape for the model i used the eleven rig (http://elevenrig.blogspot.co.uk/) it's listed as one of the references on the 11 second club as a rig that's nice to animate with and that's why i chose it. I only managed 3 poses because it's a lot harder to do than you think and even the three that i did I'm not entirely happy with. I plan on doing more of these involving male poses as well, i might look at creating some poses with a rig that has more lifelike proportions as well even though I'm enjoying the challenge of mimicking the stance with this rig.

The other thing i bought today was Dishonoured...

 I have a habit of trying to avoid all coverage of games and films I'm interested in because i find it's more fun not knowing anything and learning as i play/watch. This is a bit of an advantage when it comes to the test I'm planning to do. I'm going to play dishonoured and write down what i think my characters personality is like and as i learn I'll act as close to that personality as i can within in the game. Hopefully this will throw up animations they haven't included which i think would help reflect the main protagonist's personality. However I'm aware that this will be purely from my own opinion so as an extra test I'm going to get James to do the same thing when he's playing the game. He won't be there when i play and i won't watch him play parts i haven't seen yet so I'm not influenced by his choices and vice versa. It will be interesting to see if we both come back with the same sort of character profile as i know that the game does give you the option to choose some of your characters choices to a degree. If we both think of the character the same way then  either we both are quite similar or the game may be subtly pushing us towards certain choices, possibly although not exclusively through the way NPCs react around us.

19/10/12 - Importance of Character In Games

I started the day with a little plan of attack.
I wanted to:

• Re- read Robin Sloan's journal with my new project, NPC reactions to player interactions, in mind. Fishing for things that could be relevant in backing up my own ideas in my lit review and possible criteria to look into to use as a framework.
• Devise a mini project focusing on an aspect of character animation i feel weaker on.

What I've actually done ( I'll try and justify my notes and why i think they're important as i go.):

Re-read the first part of Robin Sloan's journal on User Agency and Character Performance within games. I've taken a quote which backs up my own argument that NPC's are needed to create a compelling story within certain types of games.

"Pivotal (NPCS) - those constituting the supporting cast of a video game - are essential to the telling of a game story. Particularly in genres that focus on story and characters" (Sloan, 2011)
Later on he identifies that the development of reactive characters performance has been largely overlooked in games thus far. Which further justifies my project as a valid topic to look into. I also found a quote which i thought about possibly turning into a test.

" Variation, Posing, Sequence and Timing of character movements rendered on the fly can manipulate audience interpretation and the perceived content"
I could possibly create a couple animations exploring each of the four criteria mentioned and then let other people view them and give their own opinions on how the difference affects what they think the characters personality could be.
 For example, for pose I could show short idle animations of the same character standing with slightly different posture and see if that has any affect on the audience interpretation of their personality.

I then looked for journals that studied the importance of character in video games, i think this search stemmed from a thought that's been resonating with me for the last few days and looking at character personality brought it to the surface again. Recently i attended a talk laid on by the university with Sean Laverty who works at Blizzard and Fraser Maclean who works within the animation industry on such projects as Tarzan and Who framed Roger Rabbit. During the talk Fraser Maclean made a comment about the importance of character animation within games and how he didn't feel it was as important as the environment the player was in. I could be misinterpreting his comment but from the way it sounded and if that view is commonly shared it could be one reason why NPC personality hasn't been explored fully in games so far.
My search produced a journal called:



"Characters in Computer Games:  Toward Understanding Interpretation and Design"
- Petri Lankoski, Satu Heliö, Inger Ekman
which can be found at this link: http://www.digra.org/dl/db/05087.10012.pdf

Although it looks more at the character of the protagonist in games some of the methods they use are interesting and could easily be applied to NPCs instead. For example they look at the use of Dramatic writing and Literary Theory when designing a character for games.

The first note i took was a reference to G.Forster who wrote a view on designing literary characters. He put characters into two categories, flat and round. Flat characters are predictable in their responses and have little or no defining characteristics which could be a way of thinking about background NPC's. Round characters need to be "believable even when they surprise the reader"which could be a way of thinking when designing a more prominent NPC such as a companion character.

The next note was in regards to how possible it is to design a game character with personality as both Frasca and Menetzky agreed that more freedom for the player to interact = less character which would justify why a lot of games use cut scenes to get the characters personality across instead of attempting to do it within the game.

Then the article speaks about methods of portraying personality of the main character within the game and one in particular i thought applied to NPC personality. They speak about predefined action as a method of retaining consistency of personality and the example they give was the way characters (NPCs) react towards the protagonist. An NPCs reactions to the protagonists actions or presence will give the player some idea of the protagonist's personality. They use ICO as an example of this, Yorda's reactions to ICO within the game are trusting and obedient which will help to establish ICO's nature as friendly and caring.

   I think this view of the role of the NPC gives a greater cause for more performance based reactions within games to help the player know their place in the world and the sort of person they play as.

This research seems to have uncovered a link between the personality of the protagonist and the reactions the NPC's would be required to give which may explain why some animations were missing when the player acts out of character. So while looking at games from now i might want to take that into account.

I had some more notes on this journal but they seem to be drifting into the visual design of a character and it's affect on personality which isn't really something i want to look into at this time.


Animation PractiseAs I mentioned at the beginning of this post i want to prepare little exercises for me to do when i don't have any tests planned so i can continue to improve my skills as an animator. The first I've come up with is doing a study on hand movements. I plan on recording my hand moving and then mimicking the reference footage with an animated rig. Hopefully it will give me a better insight into how hands move so that when i animate in future i have a deeper understanding of how to approach it.

Update: I got a bit stuck with what to do with my hand so after some hunting for a good clip of film with no success i ended up on the 11 second club website. I was tempted to enter the competition for this month or at least use it for practise but when i was reading the tips it gives you i came across this quote:

"It's like a guy saying, "You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to start off as a four-star chef." Well, can you cook a cup of rice? "No." Can you cook an omelet? "No." Well, why don't you start off learning how to cook rice, and by the way, that takes about a year. Four star chefs take a full year learning how to cook rice and how to cook omelettes  "Well, I'm not going to do that." Well, then you're never going to be a four-star chef." 

I think i want to start a bit smaller with my practices, go back to basics a bit more so i can get a better grasp on the principles of animation. It gave a few suggestions of ways to practice which i'm going to take on board. They are...

Give it some thought. Here are some exercise ideas you can try if you really want to improve those basic skills:

Bounce a ball up and down. Don't worry about moving it across the screen, or rotating it naturally, or interacting with obstacles. Just try a simple up-and-down bounce. It's more complicated than you might think. 

Buy a magazine. Any magazine. On almost every page you'll find a photograph of a person in a pose, whether it's an advertisement or related to the magazine's featured articles. Pick one and pose your character to match that photograph as closely as possible. Really look at all of the nuances--from the spine to the hips, to the tips of the fingers--that create that pose.

Stand your character naturally in one place, resting its weight on its left leg. Then animate the character shifting its weight to the right leg while standing in the same spot.

Do the same exercise as above, only this time have the character's feet shift a little as well.

Here's the animations of a ball, one heavy one light. I've also been trying to use my sketchbook more.. the better i understand how anatomy works the better my poses will appear in my animations.


Update 2: I explained the theory of NPCs animations reflecting the main characters personality to James and because i had to explain it to someone out loud it came out making a lot more sense and had a lot more detail to it so i'm going to try and remember what i said. Using the above information i explained that i would need to look for animations that were missing but still would be expected to happen from the protagonist of a game. As according to the theory i had made based on the information from the Journal mentioned earlier in this post the animations of an NPC need to be not only a reflection of their own individual personality but that of the protagonists personality too. I then picked out a reason why i thought skyrim had done better than a lot of previous games because when playing as a Kajit some of the NPCs in the world had almost a racist attitude towards me, and comments and reactions fitted with that, but what they didn't do is react to my character as an individual which is where it fell down a little. From this i thought perhaps a mix of skyrims reactions to the stereotype of my character and fables reaction to me as an individual would be the best way to approach a new system. So if you spoke to a character in skyrim often enough they grew either fonder or more aggressive towards you based on your previous actions. James then told me about a game that came out about a month ago which apparently didn't do as well as it should have called Spec Ops : The line. It's a first person shooter but apparently it plays much more on story and the choices you make come back to haunt you and your character. I haven't played this but based on the opinion of Yahtzee's review of it on zero punctuation it looks worth it just to observe the changes in the characters animations (if there are any) plus any game that he doesn't tear a new one, if you pardon the expression, seems to be worth playing. Here's his review, expect his usually crassness...

The Escapist : Zero Punctuation : Spec Ops: The Line

18/10/12 - Test and Tutorial

Today we had a tutorial which attempted to help us understand how we could go about figuring out our critial framework which is essentially how we plan on structuring our research (or thats what i thought it was anyway) We were shown some examples from last year and it just made me feel a little daunted by the whole thing but i get why we were told about it now. It should help us recognise it when they start to form.

At the moment my framework seems to be based around reactions that are missing in GTA 4 as thats the only game i've really looked at and the small amount of body language study i've done so my suggestion for a reaction had some sort of validity. This doesn't seem right and its made me think i should probably try and collect a bit more data. My notes from today list a few things i feel i need to do or think might be useful to add to my framework.

• More Game research. I need a larger volume so i can see if any reactions are consistently missing or wrong.
• I NEED to look up the technical restraints currently experienced by game animators.
• Considering comparing recordings of game animation against the principles of animation to see if there's any that they tend to leave out which might be shattering the suspension of disbelief
• Look up Suspension of Disbelief as a theory in more detail
• Re-read Robin Sloan's journal with my new project in mind.
• Look at more body language as required for my tests.
• Animate reactions i think aren't done well enough with any knowledge i can draw upon (hopefully as i gain more information on the topic it should influence how i go about animating reactions)

First Test Animation

As i mentioned in my previous post I've based this test on the reaction that could be given to having a gun aimed at them. This is meant to demonstrate the one NPC's use of defensive body language and awareness of the direction the gun is coming from and then the other NPC reacting to the firsts reaction, then reacting to the gun them self. Originally when planning i decided to have three characters in the scene but i realised that there was no need for a third character at all so removed one.

The rig i'm using for my tests is the Moom Rig version 1.8. I downloaded it from creativecrash.com and having used the rig before i thought it was better to work with one that i was comfortable animating with rather than creating my own.

17/10/12 - Body Language and Animation Test

I decided I'd combine a couple of the the tests I'd suggested into one. I'm going to mimic a gun being pointed at a group of three people and animate what i think possibly should happen in that situation. I decided it wasn't a great idea to just jump in and guess so I've spent some time looking for validation for my suggestions in journals and books on body language. So far all I've found is this website which i presume takes its information from the book "changing minds" by David Straker

http://changingminds.org/techniques/body/defensive_body.htm

I tried to get quotes from inside the book but the look inside function seems to be limited... or the book is actually very small and unhelpful... more likely to be the first though. 

So here are the defensive movements that i thought might apply to the situation. The first represents instinctive covering of internal body parts such as hunching the shoulders to protect the neck and using the arms to cover the abdomen and face. The second uses its arms to keep distance between them and the danger. The third is pretty obvious, hiding behind something, although this is an extreme representation as people may hide behind something as small as a pen instinctively. The fourth is crouching into a ball and making yourself as small as possible. Smaller target, harder to hit. And the Fifth is rabbit in car headlights approach, so scared that the muscles stiffen. This could be done for a couple of reasons, either tensing the muscles to prepare for a physical attack or not moving in case of raptor attack or another predator that sees movement clearer.

I've done two different storyboards because i thought if the people involved were different it would probably affect the way the people responded. I probably should have done an extra frame so person 1 could react further but i think this is a good starting point. The NPCs  especially no. 3 in this example display a number of the reactions listed in the link above to help display fear. I tried to make it so that no. 1 has a delayed reaction because they'd be mainly facing away from the gun so they would only really notice because of the reactions of the other 2. and the whole purpose of this test is to recreate something that might actually happen.

I've started animating but it'll take another day at least to get it to a place where im happy it shows what i want it to. Next test maybe less people...

16/10/12 - GTA4

First game that I've looked at is GTA 4, here's it's basic information then I'll move onto findings.

Name: Grand Theft Auto IV
Dev: Rockstar North
Year: 2008
Genre: Open World Action Adventure

In the beginning of the video I'm checking the NPCs response to being bumped into, the amount of force varies but because the player animation uses their arm to hit the NPCs as they pass, the amount the NPC moves doesn't need to change much. At 00:27 you can see the NPCs causing a reaction to bumping into one another which is a nice touch.

 0:33 I then decided to stalk an NPC to see how they react, to begin with i stayed fairly close but didn't touch and the NPC did look suspiciously over their shoulder at me on a number of occasions. They seemed to try and get away by changing direction too but he could have sped up or stopped and confronted my character for being too close. Then i got a little more annoying and repeatedly bumped into him. He didn't try and stop me and it was only when i accidentally pushed him into oncoming traffic that the NPC gradually got more and more agitated and ended up running away from me. The chase did spark some response from other NPCs and caused them to panic a little too. At around 3:30 i knocked the NPC down and it seemed like the NPC had died as he remained motionless while i walked around on top of him but as soon as i moved away he would get up. It would make more sense if the character displayed a little more self preservation and depending on how long I'd been chasing them or how hurt they were they could either try and push my character away or maybe try to protect themselves perhaps by curling into the foetal position? Another note was no-one tried to help him.

5:20 I tested the affect pulling a small handgun on NPC's would have. While aiming at one person in the crowd another could clearly see what i was doing but didn't react till i pointed the gun at them directly. While i was aiming at specific NPCs other were casually walking passed like nothing was happening would it make more sense if my actions affected a group of NPCs around me or made people avoid me? Some didn't even look at the gun before cowering... in the wrong direction.

6:22 I noticed with the small gun no-one took any notice of it until i pointed it at them so i brought out a slightly larger more obvious gun and wandered around for a little while to see if it got anyone worried. It didn't, so i found a police officer someone who surely should react to a civilian walking the streets carrying a large gun. He didn't react either and so i bumped into him a few times with it to see if that would make him notice. It was only when I'd annoyed him enough that he decided i was bad news but that was more due to me harassing him than me carrying a gun.

Possible tests: 
Have an NPC display some sort of self preservation when being harassed after falling over.
Have another NPC step in when someone weaker is being harassed such as someone older.
Have a group of NPCs notice other NPCs reactions to a gun being pulled out.
Have it so the NPC cowered while looking at the gun, or checked where you were while running away by looking over their shoulder.

15/10/12 - Reflection and Plan

Presentation
I think that this presentation went the smoothest that I've had to do while being at Uni, all through 3rd year i spent quite a bit of effort trying to weaken my stage fright and become better at public speaking but despite all of that i never managed to find a technique that worked for me. I either wrote too little in my notes and it didn't jog my memory enough or i wrote too much and so i didn't read any of it or just read it like a script. This time i approached it from a couple of angles. For a start, the meetings i had with the other girls meant i had more people to practise in front of and anything i didn't include or didn't explain well enough was brought up. I got to see what other people had done and what they'd included which for the most part was a little daunting but to be honest the range of approaches people had taken made me feel alright with my own. When it came to notes i got my boyfriend to write out the things he thought were most important when i presented to him and so they were just the right level of detail then when using them to present i could add adjustments where needed. Sorting out the slides was only difficult because i had to piece together my notes and blog posts into a consistent thought process and figure out which parts were relevant enough to bring up. The only thing i think i might have wanted to include was the process for self improvement I've started in regards to facial emotion (and looking to include poses as well).

The feedback i got was encouraging, the lecturers seemed to think i was on the right track which is nice to hear and gave me a few tips on areas i should look into. Here are my notes:

What people play games? Would it be a hindrance to some of them?

Film the tests i do while playing games

Make sure that i remember to say which games actually give you the opportunity to interact outside of cut scenes and mini interaction games.

Make test animations, they don't have to be too detailed, evaluate them against the existing animations.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Plan of attack

1 or 2 days playing games and writing notes
2 or 3 days animating tests and evaluating
2 days researching relevant theories and journals

When playing games I'll have a camcorder ready to film findings I'll be playing games specifically to annoy NPCs but also I'll be playing games normally to see if i find anything out just during the process. I'll also be using a kind of form I've put together, it'll include the following information:

Name of game
Developer
Year made
Genre of Game
Whose it aimed at?
NPC type
Action
Reaction

I've chosen to record these things for various reasons but mainly it's so if i find something in journals or books about techniques used i can then say in my dissertation whether the technique was around at a certain time or was affordable for smaller developers. The genre will reflect the audience it's more likely aimed at and the NPC type will affect what extent the personality needed would be.

I had a thought for my personal development as well! I've decided I'm going to take part in the 11 second club's voice clip competition... well, sort of. I'll create storyboards reflecting emotion in characters once a week and not look at my old storyboard before drawing a new one. Practise emotions and maybe create an animatic.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Today i read parts of the illusion of life focusing on adding personality to characters to help me develop my animating ability further. Also to see if i could pin point anything useful for my lit review.

Tomorrow I'll start playing games so i have something to base my tests on

10/10/12 - Bonus Post!

I've gradually got more and more confused as the weeks gone on to the point where today i felt like i had absolutely no idea what i was doing or how anything i'd done could possibly help me move forward. Luckily i had a meeting arranged with Robin today anyway and he's really helped me organize my thought process' and figure out where i should go next.

Before the meeting i tried to reorganize my thoughts myself and created this mind map relating to everything to do with NPC animations, I've been finding when i make notes that i keep slipping into the animations of the player instead. 

I tried to strictly stick to the animations of the NPCs only and when talking to Robin about the things i'd wrote the reactions to the players actions started to highlight itself. I began by speaking about possible tests i could do with how different personalities would react to the same action done by the main character. I used the example of in skyrim that you can put a bucket on someones head and they don't react. How would some distinct personalities react to that. This brought the conversation round to reactions to inappropriate behavior in games in general. Why aren't there animations in place for when you offer a character a carrot randomly or walk around the player while they're speaking to you. Shouldn't players react to needless violence of their property? Skyrim did do this but a lot of games don't. He suggested i could do tests on possible reactions to unconventional situations in games and then by doing this it might show up some situations that aren't so completely random but also don't have responses therefore breaking the suspension of disbelief. Practice based research should help uncover missing animations in existing games and then later down the line i could work on classifying these animations so that as well as having sets of animations relating to walks, runs and jumps there would be a whole extra class relating to responses to certain types of situation.

Skyrim bucket

9/10/12 - Journal Notes

Immediate notes on Robin Sloan's Journal on the character performance of NPC's

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwZcHdbYXCg&feature=related
Milo and Kate Ted Talk

Janet Murray hamlet on the holodeck the future of narrative in cyberspace

alyx in half life <-- good example of emotional attachment

play fable 2

heavy rain- sacrifices user input time based events affect story but limits choices

facade <-- look into, conceptual game

Other (possibly useful) Journals

http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/1930000/1920823/p257-shen.pdf?ip=193.60.166.69&acc=ACTIVE%20SERVICE&CFID=124626080&CFTOKEN=44318561&__acm__=1349705209_c103320dbea38609239ae9b6631acd9e
(could be wrong) Looks to be about analysing the players emotions and gestures so that the character can react, adding an extra level of dynamism?


http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/1550000/1541908/a28-hartley.pdf?ip=193.60.166.69&acc=ACTIVE%20SERVICE&CFID=124626080&CFTOKEN=44318561&__acm__=1349705551_9f3bc10c59d5d388972eba92e8832dde

Appears to be talking about a computer system that helps to predict the players actions so that the NPC's can be programmed accordingly. Hopes to move away from AI that follows paths and predictable movements. Mainly in FPS games. As interesting as this is.. not really relevant to me as it's more about the programming of AI than the animation.

"Unfortunately for games developers, human players are intelligent, responsive, and adaptable
beings, consequently they are able to exploit NPC errors, repetitive behaviors,
and poor decision making. This reduces the enjoyment for the players, and is
likely to lead them to discard the game in pursuit of more challenging game play
experiences. Game developers need to overcome these inadequacies if they are
to make game characters more believable and responsive to the game player"

. "The ability of a human player to adapt to an opponent’s
tactics is an important skill and one that separates an expert game player
from a novice. NPCs that incorporate this ability have the potential to adapt
to a human player’s actions, generate new behavior according to past experiences, overcome poorly developed “conventional AI,” and scale their difficulty
according to a human player’s ability"


http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/1550000/1541902/a22-bostan.pdf?ip=193.60.166.69&acc=ACTIVE%20SERVICE&CFID=124626080&CFTOKEN=44318561&__acm__=1349706909_b8d5ba8a19373f432eae9ff9c24531c1

Player Motivations: A Psychological
Perspective

Maybe has a psychological motivation to do with attachment to characters within games?

Talking about NPCs in MMORPGs
"These NPC characters or creatures 17 that join the party may become especially handy in combat situations, but relationships with these characters are more believable if they have their own personalities, emotions, goals, and motivations; if they are perceptive of environmental changes; if they keep track of their own social interactions (memories); and if they are capable of reacting to player choices and actions throughout the game [Kline and Blumberg 1999; Romano and Wong 2004; Livingstone 2006; Cutumisu et al. 2006].

For example, characters that join the player in Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn, all have different backgrounds and distinctive personalities, and it is their phrases, 18 arguments, and battle cries that obtain the player’s loyalty. If such characters become dissatisfied with the player’s decisions, they can leave the party and never come back.

Psychological need of affiliation

http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/1180000/1178892/a58-nakano.pdf?ip=193.60.166.69&acc=ACTIVE%20SERVICE&CFID=124626080&CFTOKEN=44318561&__acm__=1349708366_985eed50ced8f73dc62237e0cbf3b556

Talks about using layered animation to add unconscious movements and poses to NPC characters so they don't just repeat the same movements over and over again. Would help make them seem more lifelike. It's more technical but it shows that there could be a method available to produce an affect i might want to replicate?

8/10/12 - What inspires me

I've always loved watching animations since I was very small, from the classic Disney films to 3D animation such as Shrek and, of course, Pixar. I loved the way they could bring characters who could never exist in reality to life on the screen.

I didn't really realise I wanted to make them myself until I had to choose between art and drama for GCSE's, I chose art because I knew my nerves would get the better of me and id prefer to be out of the direct limelight. It was then i realised animation would let me do both. I would be able to act but without fear of stage fright and i loved that.

I spent a lot of time watching the extras on DVDs and produced little stop motion films for fun in my spare time.

Coming to Abertay has opened my eyes to the other side of animation. Animation for games. For some reason i managed to miss the part where Abertay has massive links to the games industry it was really the opportunity to figure out if animation was really the direction i wanted to go in as opposed to modelling or concept art that drew me to the course. But since being here I've become a lot more involved in games, I've played a lot more and seeing how the animations have improved over the few short years I've been here is quite exciting. I've played all 3 of the uncharted series and each time the animations have become better and from the looks of the game play footage released for the last of us, naughty dog has stepped it up again.
 The main reason i wanted to play L.A Noire was all of the things I'd seen about how they'd captured facial animation in the game, i thought it was fascinating and considering how little emotion characters previously has shown it was a much needed development for character animations.


                                

L.A Noire Facial Mo-Cap

                             
After being a part of so many game projects from 3rd year Personal Project to Dare to be Digital in my time at uni so far it's given me a deeper understanding of game animation and how its progressing and that's why I'd like to do my dissertation on game animation as opposed to film animation. It's going to improve and it's going to feel like you're in an actual movie at some point.

6/10/12 - Pitch and Inspiration

I feel like today is the earliest time I can really start to formulate my pitch presentation as it's only been in the last week where I haven't felt my research has just been me grasping at straws. The deeper look into NPC animations and the other questions I'd had waiting that have now somehow been included has really made it feel like I'm working towards a final goal, I don't know what that goal is exactly yet but at least the vague plans are starting to formulate. Also by starting now I have just enough time to cover things I think I really should do before it's too late to fully understand them.

In the tutorial on Thursday we had a small list of things we might want to include in the presentation and those are the things I'm going to try and fulfil.

They were:

Evidence

What am I looking at

Explain the thought process

What activities am i doing

Findings so far

Problems I've encountered

Examples of inspiration

Whats next?

So far of these I haven't included examples of what inspires me or a real plan of where I'd like to move from here and other than the notes i've been taking i don't feel like i have any evidence of research such as little tests. My next blog post will be on the things that inspire me in the world of animation.

In other news i've found a whole pile of research on NPC animation and from the abstract it seems very simi8lar to what i would like to research. Unfortunately it was covered just under a year ago by one of my lecturers, i've sent an email to Lynn asking her advise on whether its still a good idea for me to look into it.

5/10/12 - Personal Development

While investigating certain aspects of my chosen field of research I realised that my ability to concept facial expressions is a little lacking. Obvious emotions such as happy and sad are one thing but what about the ones for specific moments? What expression would reflect trying not to look at something on someone's face or the expression when you just realised you've said something stupid. I'd like to practise this a little and develop my ability to draw facial expressions. I've been observing various people and to begin with have been exaggerating them so i can learn the basics such as subtle changes in eye and mouth shape. The most difficult part is actually recording the subtle changes right.

Some of these work well but others don't quite convey what i wanted them to.

4/10/12 - Fable, Baby JellyFish and Tutorial 3

I've played the beginning part of Fable 3 to pay closer attention to the NPC's animations, i looked at the playable character, the non important NPC's and the NPC's involved in quests. Here are the observations i made:

Jasper (companion character? butler):
Walk cycle distinctive and clearly shows the characters personality, he walks with his head held high to reflect the class of the people he serves. He walks with his hands clasped lightly in front of him and seems to portray the movements of a stereotypical upper-class butler. His facial expressions seem limited to brow movements and relies heavily on their movements and from the head as a whole.


Guards(non essential characters):
To combat complex interaction animations the camera switches to a separate scene when choosing to interact with the guards or any of the other non essential characters. There were two guards available to talk to so i took the opportunity of using the positive interaction with one and the negative with the other to see if it would affect their attitude to me outside of the interaction. It didn't seem to have any affect on how they spoke or gestured towards me but that could be a choice because my character is the "princess" and it would be disrespectful but i doubt it.

Noblewomen/man(non essential):
When interacting with them they seemed to have the same interaction animations as the guards, would have been nice if they moved to reflect their social status.


Everyone outside castle including myself(non essential, playable character):
 When my character comes within a certain range of them they will turn and courtesy or bow but my character doesn't react at all to their animations. Like I'm ignoring them

Me (playable):
No change to animations when in water of a height that doesn't require swimming. The water seems to have no affect on speed or effort the character needs to put in. As if the water isn't there. The animations seem obviously female when playing the game but they switch to being more masculine during cut scenes, they probably used the same animations for both genders.

Inside castle (non essential):
The characters involved in the cut scene resumed their castle duties outside of the cut scene but didn't react to the playable character even when i was running into them and getting in their way.


Jasper, Me, Walter (companions, playable):
Just before i had to battle a cluster of bats none of the characters including myself reacted to their sudden appearance, this would make sense for the warrior Walter but for the butler and the princess seemed a little odd. Jasper did cower once the fight had begun though.

Quest characters:(main, secondary):
Main characters quests generally flip to a cut scene to show more emotion and movement but seem to not react to character movements other than the occasional bit of speech to remind the player of what they're meant to be doing. The same goes for secondary quests apart from there is no cut scene initially. To find the secondary characters again in a crowd they use a giant exclamation mark hovering above them.


Final observations:

The game requires you to gain an attachment to some of the key characters for greater effect later in the plot but some of the animations (or lack of) can make the characters seem cold in places. The voice acting is great but that's not what I'm investigating the secondary characters you don't need to gain an attachment to so i don't think that is so much of an issue and is more done to save on time and money so it's understandable. But i think the animations of the main companion characters such as Walter especially should be more in depth. However this game is two years old now and so to see if there have been any advances i feel like i should look into another game made much more recently. Generally if a player needs to become attached to an NPC the game itself is story driven and so I'll focus my investigation to a fairly recent story driven game which has companion characters.

State of my jellyfish

At the moment my Jellyfish looks like this. I've ruled out giving walk cycles personality and how to create a seamless but variable run cycle because i don't think i could cope with only focusing on run cycles for an entire project and I'd like to keep interested.
I'm currently looking into NPC's and their personalities but I'm finding that the other ones I've circled have come up as valid questions relating to the main one. 

I've made a Jellyfish for the NPC question itself as well. Keep my questions somewhere while im investigating. Trying desperately to keep my thoughts in some reasonable sense of order.


Update: Found a little developer diary talking about NPC animations and their importance which is why they are paying a bit more attention to them.
http://www.cityofsteam.com/design-dev-journal-newly-planned-npc-features
Quote
"What is it that all players of all games do most often? That you’re most likely to do every time you log into a game to play? I have no idea how you might answer this question, but in my humble opinion, interacting with the NPCs (non player characters) is definitely one of these. You talk to a shop NPC to buy equipment/potions/materials; you talk to a marketplace NPC to sell items to other players; you accept quests from Quest NPCs and complete them to get rewards; you report crimes to patrol guards; you repair your broken equipment at the repair shop; you learn abilities from them, or tell them that you want to change your abilities; some NPCs help you kill mobs (mobs are also NPCs, if in a broad sense); some NPCs get killed by you; some NPCs are your player character’s family members, and you laugh with them and weep over their sad stories. Just imagine, should all the NPCs (shopkeepers, patrol guards, mobs, bosses, all!) go on a strike, what would be left for you to do in the game…? I can’t think of nothing! To me it would be like living in a dead city!"

I agree with this...


Update Part 2:
The tutorial we just had was kind of like a mini pitch and crit. I explained what i could remember about my project to Ceren, Lorna and Judy and then they had some time to sort my strengths and weaknesses, they gave me ideas to pursue and things to look into. It was good to have an outside opinion on my research as it made clearer some of the hidden trends i wasn't aware of. For example they noticed that the two main areas i was looking into within NPC's were Enrichment and Attachment  both very different which would explain why I've being feeling a little torn when writing notes. They gave me a couple or good examples of character attachment to look at one of which is supposedly the "saddest game death ever" but the character is apparently smiling and pretty much static due to technical restrictions at the time. They said that it was good that I knew my boundaries such as I don't want to look into the technical side of things like rigging so I could focus more on the animations.

2/10/12 - Jellyfishes and NPCs

I just re read what i posted yesterday and realised i hadn't put up my jellyfish so the whole NPC thing would seem like a shot in the dark.
Because i wrote my jellyfish in green it isn't showing up too well in photos so I've made a quick digital version to show my thoughts and ideas and things.

I've been playing around with the idea of the NPC personality and yesterday had drifted from just NPC's to Companion characters because i wasn't sure why you'd need to grow attached to just a random NPC that wonders around. When wondering you don't need to grow attached to other people around you in the street so why need it in a game? I then thought about the characters you do interact with, maybe people who you talk to for part of the storyline. I'd need to investigate into how well these people are animated in an existing game or a couple of existing games to give a slightly broader perspective. The whole companion thing started to break down in my mind a little when i realised that it's probably more down to the voice acting and script. whether you like a character you're with or not. For example in Skyrim when you have a companion you're not going to pay attention to how they follow you or how they fight as long as they do it well. This is backed up by the fact there are websites which rank the companions in skyrim mentioning personality but when playing, you notice the animations for each of the characters is the same as any other character with the same skillset.

Not my picture

http://www.ugo.com/games/skyrims-best-companions

 In portal 2 you do grow attached to your companion in 2 player but i think that's more down to how they act in cut scenes and the little moves such as high five and dancing that you can do extra to interact with them. But maybe thats the sort of animations i should be focusing on? Cutscenes give the animator more control and a short window to convince the player that your character is an individual. And the little character interactions just add to that base that the cutscenes lay down.
Heres the trailed for the co-op mode which illustrates my point perfectly:

I think the fact the companion in this instance will be controlled by a human would also play into how you would feel about them. The personality of the player will be reflected in the actions of the character they are playing.

Not my picture

Going back to a previous point on NPC's you encounter for quest lines i think i'm going to go do some investigating. I'm going to re play Fable 3 and take notes on anything i think is done well or anything which could be improved to see if (from fable 3's perspective) theres anything to research in this question. 

1/10/20 - Companion Character

Maybe look into how good animations of companion characters as opposed to NPC's you aren't necessarily meant to form opinions of? Companions in Skyrim.. are you meant to grow attached to them? Would it make you want to keep them alive longer? Same goes for games like enslaved where you have to escort a character for pretty much the entire game. I remember people commenting on how annoying the girl was. If her facial expressions made her more human would you be able to understand her situation better?

Games i can think of with companion characters off the top of my head: I might wait till i've narrowed my topic down before i start investigating this more.

Enslaved
Skyrim
Jak and Daxter
Portal 2

NEED TO ADD MORE JELLYFISH THINGS.